The universal nature of air travel has contributed to countless examples of mundane airport architecture in recent years. The many airport terminals designed by French architect Paul Andreu provide exceptions to this worldwide trend. Of particular interest is Terminal 2E at Paris-Charles De Gaulle (CDG) airport, the final work of his thirty-seven-year involvement with the airport consortium Aéroports de Paris (AdP). With its soaring ceilings, rich use of concrete, glass, and African timber, and innovative elliptical structure, 2E broke the mold when it opened in June 2003. Instead of being a forgettable gateway to the plane, like so many other airports that are experienced only in motion, 2E was designed as a sort of monument: here, travelers were encouraged to slow down to acknowledge the grandeur of the terminal. The ticketing hall and boarding gate concourse were made to be places of great aesthetic interest, curvilinear spaces comprised of a seemingly limitless, fifteen-inch-thick, pierced, reinforced concrete shell, a feature which contributed to the building’s stunning overall impression but would also ultimately contribute to its untimely demise: its structural integrity proved transient, as a section of the roof of the concourse would collapse just eleven months later, killing four passengers on the spot and prompting an investigation at the highest levels of French government. After four years of redesign, the terminal has recently reopened, alongside a concurrently built terminal known as Satellite 3, designed by Dominique Parent and Norbert Marduel, whose lackluster architecture provides a dramatic contrast with 2E. In a somewhat paradoxical way, Andreu, who has written in passionate defense of his airports as relevant, not banal spaces, designed a terminal whose function as a glorious departure point to death-defying flight became an agent of death itself.

Just after dawn on May 23, 2004, following the arrival of two flights from Johannesburg and New York, glass, steel, and concrete came raining down onto the arrival and departure passageways of a portion of the 2,130-foot concourse of 2E, which was still not even a year old. While not apparent on the day of the collapse, the technical investigation released by the French Transport Ministry in February 2005 found serious engineering flaws that left the concrete shell weakened by external temperatures. This material defect set off a chain of events that resulted in structural failure, ultimately leading to the collapse of a section of the roof. The report steered clear of laying any criminal charges and did not fault any individual actor. Andreu’s role as chief architect of AdP until 2002 had allowed him unprecedented design responsibility for all of the terminals at CDG. While only 4% of the $900 million building was affected, the nature of the collapse, which potentially threatened the structural integrity of the rest of the terminal, called the entire design into question, resulting in the closure of the whole concourse of 2E for four years.

At the time of its opening, 2E was called “futuristic” in several press accounts, and it was lauded for the quality of the design of its concourse. Part of its appeal was due to the vast, seeming endlessness of the space, which was comprised of an elliptical, vaulted concrete roof. Structural engineers exploited tunnel-building technology to avoid interior columns, permitting a wide-open cross section that spanned one hundred feet at its widest. The concrete roof was itself punctured with numerous holes, allowing for abundant natural light to bathe the concourse below. The effect was stunning, with the view down the expansive concourse showcasing an interplay of heavy and light building materials, concrete and glass, while gently curving to infinity.

The experience of passing through 2E was made even more profound by Andreu’s refusal to emphasize creature comforts such as the food court and the shopping mall typically prominently featured on a journey through an airport terminal. Such amenities often mask otherwise unremarkable, or downright bad, architecture, and they create dull environments that evoke the suburban strip mall, whose characteristics, both in terms of external design and content (retail outlets), remain nearly identical regardless of their location. In a similar vein, as air travel has become an increasingly popular mode of travel, airport terminals have become less site-specific, more generic, more anonymous. It would appear that many airport architects and planners contribute to these qualities by expunging any noteworthy or distinguishable attributes of the airport terminal, for example, by blocking views to aircraft on the tarmac, in favor of layouts which strive to process two main elements, passengers and cargo, as efficiently as possible. Indeed, passengers are treated like cargo, as their path through the airport is similarly choreographed and mechanized. Any architectural element or potential gesture of acknowledgment of travelers’ humanity becomes subservient to the increasingly stringent processing requirements, including endless security checks and ubiquitous retail opportunities. The resultant condition comprises something analogous to an over-surveilled shopping mall, contributing to a genericness that has led many travelers to no longer consider the airport a true place, since it is left with little by which to be distinguished from other building types, or from other geographical locations. A related notion is the more recent classification of the terminal as an obstacle or gauntlet, a place through which the passenger must pass in order to board the machine that will take him to his true destination. By contrast, 2E seemed to heighten the passenger/subject’s awareness of the building. The airport thus remained an integral, memorable part of the journey.

The importance accorded to the terminal within the journey has always been one of Andreu’s core beliefs. Nicknamed “architect of airports” but relatively unknown outside of architectural and airport-planning circles until the December 2007 unveiling of his National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, Andreu has designed more than fifty terminals throughout his career, including ones in Shanghai, Abu Dhabi, Jakarta, and until recently, all of the terminals at Paris-Charles De Gaulle airport, beginning in 1965 before he was 30. His first terminal was a radical, concrete-heavy flying saucer known as Aérogare 1, which opened its doors in 1974. In the following years, Andreu designed at least six successive terminals, as well as a TGV (high-speed train) station at the airport. In an age when most airports have come to be designed by large corporate offices, Andreu’s case is unique in that the design can be linked to a single personality. At the same time, for an architect with such an impressive oeuvre (over fifty million passengers flew through Paris-Charles De Gaulle last year, to say nothing of his other airports), it is curious that he has remained relatively anonymous, in contrast to the so-called “starchitects” whose names have become global brands.

This anonymity has not precluded Andreu from leaving his personal touch on the airports which he has designed. In his 1998 memoir, J’ai fait beaucoup d’aérogares ("I Have Made Many Airport Terminals”) (Paris: Descartes), Andreu ruminates on his largely airport-focused career in short chapters named for various aspects of the terminal. In one chapter, “Passageways,” he refutes the notion that the airport has become, by default, a banal place. To Andreu, the ideas of threshold and departure remain exceptional events, despite the banalization of air travel and tendencies to standardize airport design; to him, the miraculous aspect of air travel should be expressed in the design of the terminals. Indeed, flight will seemingly always represent the triumph of man over nature, or the “impossible dream,” which Andreu likens to a “transgression” (Andreu, 34), evoking the myth of Icarus, the Greek mythological character, who, seduced by the sensation of flight, died after carelessly venturing too close to the sun. Andreu’s allusion recalls the airport terminals of the Jet Age of the 1950s and 60s, when the mystery of flight inspired architects to respond in unprecedented ways. In all of its manifestations, the airport terminal is, by definition, a gateway to an altered, extra-worldly state, one which could potentially end in death, by machine failure, act of weather, or terrorist activity.

It is a great tragedy that this gateway to flight collapsed, becoming an agent of death itself. In mythical terms, it would seem as if the airport terminal had, until then, played a supporting role, providing the threshold between Earth (the everyday realm) and the sky (uncharted, risky territory). In the collapse of 2E, the airport became the principal actor, succumbing to gravity, the very force that aircraft are designed to defy. Images of the collapsed terminal showed a monumental ruin, as if from the future, with heaps of modern materials—transparent glass, concrete, and steel— in an unsettled and unsettling state.

After about four years of demolition and rebuilding, the concourse at 2E has reopened. Much of the effect of Andreu’s original design remains intact, his monument to flight restored. Concurrent with the reconstruction of 2E, AdP (now without Andreu) built an additional boarding area at the airport, Satellite 3. Architecturally not as inventive, the satellite is an efficient, light-filled rectangular shed, defined, above all, by its retail options for waiting passengers. In press releases, AdP showcases this feature by referring to Satellite 3 as “La Galerie Parisienne,” which approximately translates to “the Parisian shopping mall.” The difference between 2E and Satellite 3 is striking: while the former is remarkable by the effect of its architecture, its elliptical cross-section, and the unbounded interior it captures, the latter seems to be designed with only efficiency and passenger expenditure in mind; indeed, Satellite 3 is an example of the type of banal airport architecture which Andreu resisted. If Satellite 3 represents the direction that airport architecture has taken, perhaps the collapsed Terminal 2E did provide a glimpse of a ruin from the future, a memorial to the airport as a.